New AC mayor wants delay in debt repayment to city

MCTWilliam Marsh, center, is sworn in by city clerk Rosemary Adams Wednesday.

Hours after being sworn in as Atlantic City's Acting Mayor, William "Speedy" Marsh asked a state judge to delay a decision on how and when he must repay a $363,000 debt to the city "until this little mayoral thing works itself out."

Marsh, the City Council president, took over from former mayor Robert Levy, who resigned Wednesday, citing health problems and a federal investigation into veteran's disability payments he received stemming from his Vietnam war service. With the resignation, which followed a two-week disappearance by Levy, Marsh became acting mayor.

The $363,000 is money Marsh must repay the city for his portion of a settlement that Atlantic City paid him and a former mayor stemming from a lawsuit they filed claiming they had been fired from board of education jobs due to political retaliation.

In May, the state Supreme Court ruled Marsh and Lorenzo Langford, who would later be elected mayor, should not have received the settlement, which the court termed "infected by intolerable conflicts of interest." (Langford was in office as mayor when the City Council approved the payments.)

Marsh says he will pay the money back; he just wants a little breathing room while he gets used to the duties of his new job.

"I absolutely will pay it back," he said in an interview with The Associated Press today. "I'm not going to duck it. We're just asking for it to be suspended until this little mayoral thing works itself out."

Marsh's attorney, Frederic Bor, said he wrote to Superior Court Assignment Judge Valerie Armstrong "almost immediately" after Marsh became acting mayor on Wednesday. An aide to the judge confirmed that the request had been received, but said no hearings had yet been scheduled to consider it.